Comedy Channel Scores? One!

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” – Mel Brooks.

"It was twenty years ago today..."

Sgt. Pepper couldn't have said it better himself, but it so happens that TIME/WARNER cable launched The Comedy Channel two decades ago this month (on November 15, 1989). A year and a half later it would be rechristened Comedy Central and the rest as they say is history. But what is it a history of?



In many ways it charts the rise and fall of stand-up comedy, the re-emergence of the peanut gallery, the buying power of foul-mouthed children, and in essence, the history of America as a world power for the last twenty years. And I am in no way downplaying the importance of any one of these things -least of all, foul-mouthed children.

For those of you who had basic cable and were unencumbered by a heavy study schedule in November of 1989, you may recall the average Comedy Channel schedule as a series of clips from stand-up routines strung together in half-hour themed shows, occasionally interrupted by brief, funny segments from classic teen comedies. While many of the clips were cut from existing HBO comedy specials, there was also a wealth of clips from lesser known comics performing at venues like The Improv, Laugh Factory, Comedy Store, Catch a Rising Star, Dangerfield's and Caroline's. It was where I first saw live performances from people like Dennis Wolfberg, Bill Hicks, and a whole host of stand-up comedians who didn't die in 1994, like Tim Allen, Jeff Foxworthy and Sarah Silverman.

It was the channel that revived Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which is still one of my all time favorite TV shows, and it debuted Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect program, which was later picked up by ABC, who canceled it after Maher remarked on a 9/17/2001 broadcast, "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

I loved that show, and it's awkward celebrity guest panel, but perhaps most of all for his network dismissal, which proved Carol Burnett's axiom that "comedy is tragedy plus time".

Mystery Science Theater 3000 made it cool to talk in the movies, until it got out of hand and annoying fans ruined a good thing. In LA, where so many comedy writers reside, it would constantly amaze me how unfunny the movie theater chatter would get, forcing me to resort to barbaric practices (pouring my soda on the heads of theater squakers, for instance). But there are stellar episodes of this show, including one that made fun of a film I later put out on DVD.

Comedy Central made millionaires out of Trey Parker & Matt Stone, and made household names of the many character's on the duo's South Park. That show has broken more ground on television in the past ten years than all programming that preceded it in the first fifty. Sometimes shocking and often hilarious, the South Park gang paved the way for Family Guy in much the same way that The Simpsons had previously done for them.

The last two presidential elections proved that a satire of the evening news could be just as influential on election turn-out as the real thing, and both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have provided an apt social commentary that has been missing from news journalism while actually educating viewers. It's perhaps sad that many Americans get their news from a comedy program, but better there than not at all.

If the Channel has lost any of its edge in the last few years, it certainly hasn't lost much of its charm. The Daily Show continues to maintain the water-cooler chic it has always had, and spin-off sensation The Colbert Report has carried the tradition of excellence to new, unimaginable heights: Colbert's keynote speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006 was one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed. Lenny Bruce would have been proud.

I miss some of the shows that have come and gone, like Dr. Katz, Primetime Glick, and The Vacant Lot, but I'm fairly certain that the network that kills Kenny weekly will never lose its bite entirely, and though I very rarely watch it, I'm glad its still around.

Congratulations, Comedy Central!